I know wild pets will exist in Mists of Pandaria and that they must be at 35% of their health or lower before the option to capture them is unlocked, but I ended up with a few questions based off my years of taming pets as a Hunter. Is it possible to accidentally kill a wild pet while trying to tame them? Can you use all three pets on your team to defeat a wild pet or is it just one on one? Once captured, do they level up to an appropriate level for your pet battling, or do you need to level each up individually?

2 Answers
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Above is the action bar during pet battles. Each pet is able to use up to three attacks/abilities, these are buttons one to three. Button four allows you to swap your current pet for another and button five allows you to trap the current wild pet you are fighting. The last option is Forfeit that allows you to flee the current battle to fight another day!

Once you have trained the ability to battle with pets, you are able to track creatures that can be captured using 'Track Pets' on your mini map:

To start a pet battle, simply find a suitable wild pet and right click on them to begin a pet battle.

In order to attempt to capture a pet you must fight until your target pet is below 35% health. This will enable the capture button. You potentially could accidentally defeat the pet by continuing to attack below 35% rather than using the 'Capture' button.

Using the capture button will allow you to attempt to capture the wild pet. It is not a guaranteed capture, but at lower levels it is generally successful.

+1, I like the answer, but I can't accept it because it doesn't address any of my specific questions.
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dlanodAug 7 '12 at 21:41

@dlanod updated my answer to cover these individual questions, you will of course have the 'option' to capture the pet, you could just continue attacking instead of using the 'capture' option. As capturing pets involves a pet battle, it is likely these are 1v1 - I am unsure about pet levels but assume this will work the same way as adding new pets, they will start at level 1 and work their way up.
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kalinaAug 7 '12 at 21:52

Is it possible to accidentally kill a wild pet while trying to tame them?

Yes. If your pet is significantly stronger than the wild pet, they could deal enough damage (either normally or via a critical hit) to take the wild pet directly from above 35% to dead in one hit. If this happens, you're stuck looking for a new wild pet.

Can you use all three pets on your team to defeat a wild pet or is it just one on one?

All of them. I let my first battle pet die (by repeatedly casting a non-damaging skill), and my second battle pet came in to continue the fight against the wild pet.

Once captured, do they level up to an appropriate level for your pet battling, or do you need to level each up individually?

They do not level up to an appropriate level. However, they do retain the level at which you trapped them. If they were level 2 when you fought them, they will remain level 2. They will not regress to level 1 but they may drop a level or two if they are over level 15.

Catching any pet level 15 or under retains its current level.

Catching a level 16-20 pet will lose 1 level.

Catching a level 21-25 pet will lose 2 levels.

We have dramatically reduced the XP required to level for pets after level 10.